Organize Your Life For Success

Your goal is to organize your life in such a way that you enjoy a good income, a high standard of living, and that you are the master of your economic destiny rather than a victim of changing economic times.

The key concept here is to start making choices. Thankfully we live in a free society and everyday we can make choices. It only seems that we can’t make choices, but in fact we do make choices because we want certain outcomes.

Contribution Is the Key

Your job is an opportunity to contribute a value to your company in excess of your cost. In its simplest terms, your job is as secure as your ability to render value in excess of what it costs to keep you on the payroll. If you want to earn more money at your current job, you have to increase your value, your contribution to the enterprise.

Practically, you need to understand how your job impacts the company. If its a low impact, then start considering today about how you can have a larger impact on the business.

Add Value Every Day

If you want to get a new job, you have to find a way to contribute value to that enterprise. If you want any kind of job security, you must continually work at maintaining and increasing your value in the competitive marketplace.

And here’s a key point. Your education, knowledge, skills and experience all are investments in your ability to contribute a value for which you can be paid. But they are like any other investments. They are highly speculative.

Some forms of education has a short life span while others never change. Technical skills around computers are out of date as soon as you learn them. Skills learned that help you get along with people haven’t ever changed. Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill’s books are as relevant today as they were 50 years when they were first published. The only thing that is not relevant is the examples in the book.

Knowledge and Education Are Sunk Costs

Once you have learned a subject or developed a skill, it is a sunk cost. It is time and money spent that you cannot get back. No employer in the marketplace has any obligation to pay you for it, unless he can use your skill to produce a product or service that people are ready to buy, today.

When you are applying for a job and demanding a high salary because of your education, and do not receive the pay you think you deserve, it may be because the employer does not think your education has the same value you do. It does not matter what it cost you, the money has been spent and is gone.

Prepare For Your Next Job

Whatever job you are doing, you should be preparing for your next job. And the key question is always: Where are the customers? Which businesses and industries are growing in this economy, and which ones are declining?

Always be paying attention to what is happening around you. The person who made the best buggy whip was in demand, when the car overtook the horse and buggy, it didn’t matter how good he was at making the buggy whip – the skill is no longer needed. If your job is based on a technical skill, make sure you are connected to a technology that won’t be out of date. If you here yourself saying “The world will always need a ???” you might be in trouble now or soon. I think only exception to this rule are plumbers.

Where Is The Future?I continually meet people who ask me how they can increase their income when their entire industry is shrinking. I tell them that there are jobs with futures and there are jobs without futures, and they need to get into a field that is expanding, not contracting.

The wonderful thing about the world, is that there is always something new and new opportunity.

Never Be Without A JobThere are three forms of unemployment in America: voluntary, involuntary, and frictional. Voluntary employment exists when a person decides not to work for a certain period of time, or not to accept a particular type of job, hoping that something better will come along. Involuntary unemployment exists when a person is willing and able to work but cannot find a job anywhere. Frictional unemployment is the natural level; this includes the approximately 4 or 5 percent of the working population who are between jobs at any given time.

This means that there are always jobs available somewhere doing something. You have many choices each day when you are job hunting such as Staying in the same industry, staying in the same city, or doing what you did at the last job. There are many many more choices, make sure you see the choices you are making.

Three Keys to Lifelong EmploymentHowever, there are always jobs for the creative minority. You never have to be unemployed if you will do one of three things:

Change the work that you are offering to do,

Change the place where you are offering to work, or

Change the amount that you are asking for your services.

You should consider one or more of these three strategies whenever you are dissatisfied with your current work situation.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

Look around you at your current job and find ways to create added value every day. There’s always something more you can do.

Identify the kind of work you want to be doing in the future and then make a plan to develop the knowledge and skills you will require to do it well.

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These 21 Job Hunter Success Tips have been adapted from articles by Brian Tracy.

Brian Tracy has over 40 books, CDs, and DVDs to help you meet your personal and professional goals and dreams.